You know who is having the most fun this week in Los Angeles? The crew of 600 or more from NBC. This is the one week this season they are clearly No. 1.During the regular season, CBS beats them on Sundays because NBC is stuck with predominantly American Football Conference games. Then, on Mondays, ABC beats them both. No fun - especially when you are losing a fortune on the NFL anyway.Not this week, however. This week belongs to NBC, which is even doing Meet The Press from L.A. on Saturday.

Erin Andrews was rumored to have many career options as her contract with ESPN expired this year, but the one she couldn't resist was Fox 's opportunity to expand on her interest in college football. Andrews is the host of the new "Fox College Saturday" pregame show that will debut at 4 p.m. Saturday, with the network televising the Associated Press' preseason No. 1 team, USC, against Hawaii at the Coliseum . Fox also will use Andrews in its playoff baseball coverage, and she will conduct feature interviews on the network's NFL pregame show.

You read it right: The Super Bowl pregame show is seven hours long. It starts Sunday at 11 a.m. (WOFL-Channel 35) and doesn't stop until 6 p.m.Yes, in the age of Donald Trump and $30 million NBA point guards and 25,000-square-foot mansions and Big Gulp drinks the size of garbage cans, we have grown accustomed to wretched excess.But SEVEN hours? Three hours longer than the game itself? Two hours longer than the longest nine-inning baseball game ever played? Twice as long as the movie Titanic?

Fox Sports Florida’s “Ultimate SuperFan” contest will conclude tonight and notorious fans Jack Nelson , aka the “Angry Magic fan” or sweater vest guy” and Ernest Provetti , known for his role in Big Baby shovegate , are among the four finalists. The other finalists (identified by nicknames) are “Face Paint Guy” and “Pink Gorilla and the Magic rabbit.” If you want to help decide the “Ultimate Super Fan,” tune into “Magic LIVE” pregame show 6:30 p.m. tonight before the start of the Toronto Raptors-Orlando Magic game.

Fox Sports Florida’s “Ultimate SuperFan” contest will conclude tonight and notorious fans Jack Nelson , aka the “Angry Magic fan” or sweater vest guy” and Ernest Provetti , known for his role in Big Baby shovegate , are among the four finalists. The other finalists (identified by nicknames) are “Face Paint Guy” and “Pink Gorilla and the Magic rabbit.” If you want to help decide the “Ultimate Super Fan,” tune into “Magic LIVE” pregame show 6:30 p.m. tonight before the start of the Toronto Raptors-Orlando Magic game.

To bring all the action of Super Bowl XXVII to the estimated audience of more than 100 million viewers, NBC Sports will use an extensive variety of production equipment. Included in this inventory are videotape machines, on-air character generators, cameras, a telestrator (on-screen drawing device), still storage units, editing units and other electronic gear. The accompying diagram indentifies locations of some of the key placements in and around the Rose Bowl.TELEVISION- Network: By NBC-TV, to approximately 200 stations and throughout the United States plus Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, St. Croix, the Bahamas and Bermuda.

Sandwiched between the Baked Lay's pregame show and the Doritos commercials, between the Oscar Mayer halftime show and the Ford postgame show, a memorable football game unfolded Sunday night. Let us be thankful we were spared another Super Dud.It's a relief to report that nothing - not the windy pregame show, the glitzy ads or that bizarre Diana Ross halftime extravaganza - upstaged the Super Bowl between the Dallas Cowboys and the Pittsburgh Steelers.For the most part, NBC deserves praise for its straightforward presentation.

Are you ready for this, Magic fans?You'll see story after story across the dial, devoted to your Orlando Magic in coming days. The coverage will be as unavoidable - and as thorough - as a Shaquille O'Neal slam dunk.NBC will set the pace by broadcasting the best-of-seven NBA championship between the Magic and the Houston Rockets, starting at 9 tonight. The game will be seen in 164 countries, up from 117 last year.More than 100 folks, from announcer Bob Costas to technical people, will work on the NBC telecasts here.

A daylong drenching rain made the football harder to hold onto and extra game tickets hard to get rid of Monday. Otherwise, Ohio State and Tennessee players and fans hardly were bothered by some of the worst weather in the 50-year history of the Comp-USA Florida Citrus Bowl.Although more than 72,000 tickets were sold, the rain chased hundreds away, and bowl officials announced the turnstile count at a generous 70,979.Those who remained to see Tennessee beat Ohio State, 20-14, were mostly clad in colorful rain ponchos.

Christopher Russo, who was replaced as color commentator this season for University of Central Florida football games, has been removed at least temporarily from the Knights' pregame show because of a dispute with UCF Coach Gene McDowell.Russo, sports announcer and sports talk-show host for WKIS-AM (740) radio in Orlando, did not conduct his usual pregame interview with McDowell last week before the team departed for Lexington, Va., because he couldn't contact him. John Anthony, play-by-play announcer for the Knights, taped the interview about an hour before the game at Virginia Military Institute.

It's no secret that local television stations dedicate about as much time to sports as Nick Saban does to reading fan mail in South Florida. That is, until one of our teams is in the national spotlight. And Monday's national championship game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Florida Gators is a good example of a sports story taking center stage locally. Every Orlando television station has sent a team of anchors and reporters to Phoenix to provide daily coverage. "This is what the community gets hyped for," said WFTV-Ch.

This one had the hype of a great heavyweight fight. Or at least an episode of Jerry Springer. Terrell Owens vs. Donovan McNabb. Owens vs. the Philadelphia Eagles. Heck, Owens vs. the entire city of Philadelphia. Philadelphia fans are some of the rowdiest, loudest and most emotional sports fans out there. Whether it's booing Santa Claus or cheering when former Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin was knocked unconscious. Philly fans are passionate to say the least. So the return of T.O. to Lincoln Field with the Dallas Cowboys was like waving a red flag at a bull.

For the athletes involved, it's almost like Michael Buffer has stepped to the center of the ring to announce a world championship boxing match. Pregame introductions for high-school sports are where game-day anticipation rises to a crescendo. No varsity sport has a better tradition than wrestling, where combatants are introduced one by one before the start of the match. The best setting is at the end of a grueling two-day tournament. Wrestlers have battled through the bracket for the right to be introduced as a finalist in their weight class.

Boston College's fans were welcomed to the big-time of college football Saturday with an invitation to the ESPN GameDay pre-party Florida State and Florida fans have come to take for granted over the years. An overflow of yellow-clad BC students on the campus' picturesque College Green did the school proud. "You couldn't even hear the announcers," BC Athletic Director Gene DeFilippo said. Hours before the game started, BC scored its first points for creativity. One sign came up with a twist on FSU Coach Bobby Bowden's name that in his 50 years of coaching has rarely been seen: Bobby Bowdown.

Larry Kelley's vintage, World War II B-25 bomber is headed for one more rendezvous with destiny today. The old bomber, with Kelley at the controls, will fly over Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville during a pre-game Super Bowl show that honors "The Greatest Generation" and commemorates the 60th anniversary this year of the end of World War II. Joining the bomber in the flyover will be two other vintage warplanes, T-6 Texan fighters from Warbird Adventures Inc.,...

Auditions for the pregame show at the New Year's Day 2005 Outback Bowl in Tampa will be at 1 p.m. Friday at Stars Athletics, 4921 S. Lois Ave., one block south of Gandy Boulevard, in Tampa. Performers must wear appropriate attire for learning and performing a 4-6-8 count routine choreographed by the staff of Athletic Productions Across America. All applicants must bring a head shot. Registration: 813-837-4041. WORKSHOPS & MEETINGS HOB-NOB South Lake Chamber of Commerce and Kings Ridge will present a "Hob-Nob" from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Kings Ridge clubhouse in Clermont.

The most important numbers today are 6-1-8. And we're not talking Cash 3.At 6:18 p.m. today, Super Bowl XXV starts.Hopefully two things will happen during the next three hours: First, the game will be good, and second, fans who soaked up the countless hours of pregame coverage will have the stamina to make it through to the final gun without dozing off.ABC (WFTV-Ch. 9 in Orlando) has the Super Bowl this year, which means the responsibility of putting together the obligatory two-hour pregame show (4-6 p.m.)

It's no secret that local television stations dedicate about as much time to sports as Nick Saban does to reading fan mail in South Florida. That is, until one of our teams is in the national spotlight. And Monday's national championship game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Florida Gators is a good example of a sports story taking center stage locally. Every Orlando television station has sent a team of anchors and reporters to Phoenix to provide daily coverage. "This is what the community gets hyped for," said WFTV-Ch.

One of the primary ways Florida Citrus Sports tries to make its bowl games popular among out-of-town fans, as well as locals, is to make game day special. Wednesday qualifies at McCracken Field next to the Florida Citrus Bowl. Capital One, the bowl's title sponsor, has put a chunk of its changes into pregame festivities for fans at McCracken Field. A Jumbotron will be erected for fans to watch two early bowl games (Texas vs. LSU in the Cotton and Florida vs. Michigan in the Outback). ESPN Club is setting up a full sports bar, complete with more television sets.

When they have an Emmy ceremony, they should give one to CBS right now for adding Deion Sanders to its NFL pregame crew because he instantly has become one of the best to be found on any early Sunday show. Sanders has flash. Sanders has pizzazz. Sanders has guts. It's his attitude of showing no fear when interviewing that sets him apart from just about everyone else in the business. This week Sanders went to Tampa to talk to the struggling Bucs before they played at home against the resurgent Pittsburgh Steelers.